Perdie’s hand froze over a shining chrome faucet handle. “He’s selling his house? But he must’ve just bought it?” The words tumbled out a little too fast.
“Mmm-hmm, such a shame he’s leaving tomorrow. Back to San Francisco. He’s a looker, that one. Sweet though.”
Shit. Shit. Shit.
The news sent a bolt of panic down Perdie’s spine. She had questions. Although things were already over, Carter moving away meant it was really the end. It meant he wasn’t secretly pining for her like he had been in her dreams. He wasn’t trying to bump into her by accident at the grocery store. He was moving. Moving on.
Lucille wandered in from the dining room in a Pussy Riot shirt and a sucker hanging from her mouth. She popped it out. “We’ll take it. You think we could convert this room into a studio?” She glanced at Perdie. “The hell’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing, nothing at all,” Perdie snapped, but her internal systems short-circuited.
Later that night, while the sky rained and thundered, Perdie did the one thing she swore she’d never do again, not since the day they’d first met: she googled Carter Leplan.
“Whatcha doing, P?” asked Lucille, who was strolling through the house inspecting every nook and cranny for a potential future move-out day.
Perdie jumped in her chair, her body involuntarily tense. “Torturing myself.”
“Don’t torture too late. You have an important meeting tomorrow.”
She did. Perdie, Jennifer, and Sophia had been working hard on Noah’s case. “No promises.”
A rumbling of thunder had her jumping again. A nervous energy permeated. What was she searching for? A sign? A Google search sign? For what though? Perdie scrolled through the lawyerly results, pictures of Carter wearing expensive suits and professional smiles, links to the Joy and Schulz website and Carter’s old firm.
Then something caught her eye. Exhibition: SF Museum of Modern Art, Cindy Leplan The Paths We Choose.
Don’t you click that fucking link, Perdita.
She clicked the fucking link. Carter’s mother’s exhibition from Easter.
Her heart dropped. In the cover shot of an embedded video was Carter, almost hidden in the background near an enormous painting of a multicolored fluorescent and gold-brushed mountain.
Against good self-preserving sense, she played the video. Cindy Leplan, in a gold-and-blush gown/muumuu hybrid spoke to the camera interview-style, her voice floaty and calm. “It’s about ‘The Road Not Taken.’ The Robert Frost poem. People often misinterpret it, but I’ve endeavored to capture its imagery here. No matter what road we choose in life, we might always ask ourselves what could have been. The colors of life are multitudinous. Both the regret and the joy of choice is one of life’s inevitable tortures.”
But Perdie’s eyes fixated on the action behind Cindy. “Yeah, yeah, yeah...now what’s going on over here?” She zoomed in on the corner with Carter.
He was chatting with someone out of frame, smiling, doing that thing where he rubbed his hair back and forth, and then...then she came into view. The person he was talking to. They were both dressed in all black, the woman with thick, dark hair much like Perdie’s, curvy. Pretty, definitely pretty even from a low-res video. The woman clasped both Carter’s hands, leaned in towards his ear, and they shared a laugh. The actions portrayed a special sense of intimacy Perdie had once herself been familiar with, there was no denying it.
A wealth of energized fire welled up inside her, inactive for months. Her anger, her spark, her passion had lain dormant until this very moment.
He was fucking dating? That motherfucker.
At the very least, he was hand-clasping. He and the woman appeared to like each other very, very much.
And he was moving back home. Like a light in a dark room, the video illuminated a terrifying truth.
Carter was moving to San Francisco for this new woman. Of course he would. It sounded unreasonable, but with Carter it made perfect sense. He’d moved to be with Perdie once too. He went after what he wanted. An unbridled optimist who was always dealt a lucky hand.
They would do all the things Perdie swore she could never do: move in together, share a closet, go to the grocery store. Juice those fucking oranges. The family Carter and his mothers wanted. A woman who wouldn’t disappoint.
Against her better judgment, she replayed the video, but this time instead of the dull pain eating her insides, furious anger enflamed her heart. Who was this woman? A knockoff Perdie Stone. Agh.
She scrunched her hair in her hands, ready to scream. And then it dawned on her. She needed to see him. Right now. Right fucking now.
Jacqueline’s voice twittered like a little bird in her ear: Take the risk. What’s the worst that can happen?
Thunder snapped hard outside.
Fuck it. She googled his address. How had she never even been to his house before? She really was selfish.
Her arms were numb as she shoved them through her wool coat to cover her mini sleep shorts and camisole-clad body. Her knees shook when she pushed her feet into Lucille’s fuzzy rabbit slippers. And before she left, she grabbed the extra key off the credenza and shoved it in her pocket.
The soft slipper material soaked instantly when Perdie’s feet hit the pavement of the parking lot.
Complete madness. Her actions would likely end in humiliating disaster.
But some risks were worth getting hurt for.
The four-thousand-square-foot colonial with a marsh view had an expansive driveway, and her windshield wipers fought overtime against the downpour as she neared. The vehicle slid on a diagonal when in haste she threw it into a lurching stop. She tumbled out, then sprinted.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
She pounded the door with a wild intensity she had never used against a piece of wood before. Rain pelted her sideways, hair already plastered to her face and neck.
No answer.
She stepped back to view the windows. Fuck it.
“Carter!” she yelled. “Carter! Open the door! Open the fucking door!”
